16 die in Deseret

Bombs, snipers rain fire on column

HITE, Utah (RWN) - A Fedayeen assault force working its way along the Colorado River was ambushed by Mormon forces late Sunday night, in the worst attack of the war to restore the so-called nation of Deseret to the Islamic States.

Sixteen soldiers were killed and 25 were injured when their assault element floated around a turn in the river and came under withering fire.

"The unit had reported sporadic sniper fire from the heights of Glen Canyon earlier," said Maj. Mazir Sharif, a spokesman for the Islamic Defense Command in Seattle. "When they passed the mouth of a side canyon, there was an explosion under the water which ripped the bottoms out of their boats. The survivors of the explosion crawled onto a gravel bar and set up defensive positions while calling for air support. The shelling and sniper fire was apparently very intense, but the Nauvoo Legion can't shoot straight; most of the dead were killed in the boat blast and most of the wounded came from the sniper fire."

A satellite communication from Mormon headquarters in Salt Lake City gave further details of the attack. It was apparently carried out by the Porter Brigade - the Mormon Church's special-operations unit, named after Orrin Porter Rockwell, "the avenging angel of Mormondom" in the religion's early days.

The purpose of the attack was "to show that Mormon forces can protect Deseret at any time and place we wish to," said Col. John D. Young, the Nauvoo Legion's press officer.
The Fedayeen assault element was inserted via vertical lift into the Green River basin near Gunnison Butte three weeks ago, Sharif said, to conduct "operations assessing the willingness of area residents to come to the one true calling."

Young disputed that claim in his communications, saying that the group, which the Legion had tracked since it was inserted, had been poisoning the cattle of local ranchers with a weaponized strain of BSE, more commonly known as mad-cow disease.

The Islamic States and the so-called nation of Deseret - formed by the state of Utah and a portion of southern Colorado - have been in a state of undeclared war since February 2016, when the heavily Mormon areas announced their secession from the Islamic States.

It has been a brutal guerilla war, out of much of the public's eye, fought in lonely places through the Eastern Great Basin. Both sides have accused the others of atrocities and both sides have, at one time or another, claimed partial victory.

With the April 2016 ceasefire between America and the Bible Belt still in effect, the insurrection in the West has become more of a priority, but more of a thorn, in the I.S. government's side.



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